How to build a great house hunting app using real estate APIs

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Build your idea

3 min readJan 21, 2020

93% of homebuyers in the US look for their future homes on the Internet. Clearly, in 2020 customers are choosing the fastest & most convenient method to buy, rent or sell a house. Specific real estate applications let us do that without turning to a real estate agent.

What does it mean for realtors & startups? Mobile and web apps in real estate are getting more advanced and sophisticated than ever before.

If you aim at creating a popular house-hunting app or an online portal for the US market, it’s a good idea to use some of the app development trends. Here are some of the recommended features:

Behind the scenes of creating a house-hunting app

Now let’s get on the technical side of things. This article covers insights about the US real estate market, but it will be useful for anyone wanting to build a real estate app.

You will need to access huge amounts of data to build your house-hunting app. Available properties nearby, prices, sale status, and client reviews all contribute to the end-user experience. It’s hard to imagine a real estate app without at least some of this data. So how do you integrate up-to-date properties into your application without spending a fortune on the app development?

Fortunately, you don’t need to create your own data server hosting all these properties. To access the data about properties available across the country, you can use external service databases and MLS.

MLS, or Multiple Listing Service, is a complete database of homes & properties for sale that brokers and realtors use to exchange valuable data. It’s the richest source of information you can use to power your real estate application. However, these datasets are not so easy to access. That’s why you can use MLS APIs by third-party companies to access this information in real-time.

What is a real estate API?

API (or Application Programming Interface) is a set of rules and processes that enable interactions between different software components or apps. In real estate, APIs are used to pull the data from third-party databases i.e. Multiple Listing Services and display it via your website or app.

Third-party API is just one of the ways to integrate property listings into your application. You can also do it via:

FTP Protocol. It requires transferring the whole datasets and storing data on your web server. It’s also longer to integrate since each MLS is connected separately.
Real Estate Protocol (RETS). It’s faster and more convenient to use than FTP. However, it brings loads of data to your site that you will need to accommodate. (for the US and Canada)
IDX Framing. This one is free and fast to set up. However, it might harm the SEO of your app since it presents listings as UI design elements (pictures) that Google cannot read.